I have had two fillings for many years. One of them fell out but gives me no pain at all. The other one that stayed hurts constantly. The only relief I get is when I put cool water on it. Even then, the relief is short-lived. It’s weird to me that the tooth that is hurting has the filling still. Should I remove it?
Carl
Dear Carl,
Whenever you have a tooth that only gets relief from some cool or cold water, it means the pulp is gangrenous. It sounds like some decay got under the filling and then turned into an infection. At some point, the pulp turned gangrenous. This causes it to give off gases. It is the gases that are causing your tooth pain. It fills the tooth with pressure. When you put cold water on it, that has the temporary effect of shrinking the gases for a short time, which then eases your pain, at least until the gasses are back to full force.
You need to have a root canal treatment done on this tooth to clean out all the infected pulp. I know you’re in a lot of pain. Your dentist likely has time set aside each day for emergency dental appointments. Even if he or she doesn’t have time to do the root canal treatment, he can place a small hole in the tooth which will relieve the pressure. Then, you can follow up with the root canal. Don’t ignore the follow up or things will get worse instead of better.
You’ll also want to get the tooth without the filling repaired as well. If you don’t, you’ll eventually end up with another tooth infection. These things can blow up quickly. Believe it or not, people still die from tooth infections. They put it off thinking it will just still be in the tooth, but these infections spread out of the tooth. If you think about how close your tooth is to your heart, lungs, and brain, you can see why you don’t want to take a chance. There have also been patients whose throats closed up and they couldn’t breathe once the infection reached that area.
This blog is brought to you by Baton Rouge Dentist Dr. Steven Collins.